STMicroelectronics, a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications, is bringing sophisticated cyber-protection to power-conscious connected devices with the new STM32L5 microcontroller (MCU) series featuring the Arm Cortex-M33 core.
Building on the Cortex-M33, which boosts protection for small devices by integrating Arm’s TrustZone hardware-based security, ST’s STM32L5-series MCUs add further enhancements including flexible software isolation, secure boot, key storage, and hardware cryptographic accelerators. They also provide rich functionality, high performance, and long run-times powered by coin cells or energy harvesting. Consuming as little as 33nA in shutdown mode and achieving 402* ULPMark-CP in the EEMBC ULPBench, the new MCU series builds on the Company’s expertise in low-power techniques such as adaptive voltage scaling, real-time acceleration, power gating, and multiple reduced-power operating modes proven in previous STM32L series.
“The STM32L5 series with TrustZone and additional custom protection features considerably strengthens and hardens cyber-protection for small IoT devices,” said Ricardo De Sa Earp, Microcontroller Division General Manager, STMicroelectronics. “Also featuring our unique energy-saving technologies, rich connectivity, and smart digital and analog peripherals, these devices will be the first choice to host cutting-edge connected applications.”
With extensive integrated digital and analog peripherals, and consumer and industrial interfaces such as CAN FD, USB Type-C, and USB Power Delivery, STM32L5 MCUs provide an ideal platform for products such as industrial sensors or controls, home-automation devices, smart meters, fitness trackers, smart watches, medical pumps or meters, and many others.
“IoT devices are increasing in intelligence and functionality, and security needs to be built in from the ground up,” said John Ronco, Vice President and General Manager, Embedded & Automotive Line of Business, Arm. “Arm’s Platform Security Architecture (PSA), a common framework for security implementation, aims to put security at the heart of IoT. The STM32L5 series makes it easier for developers to build trusted devices on the PSA framework with the Cortex-M33 processor, TrustZone technology and enhanced SoC security features.”
Further technical Information:
The TrustZone IP integrated in STM32L5 series MCUs implements trusted-computing principles for authenticating devices connected to a network. First conceived for equipment such as desktops, mobiles, and communication infrastructure, this hardware-based approach blocks attempts to corrupt devices or software and creates a protected execution environment for sensitive code and cyber-protection such as cryptography and key storage.
STM32L5 series users get extra freedom to include or exclude each I/O, peripheral, or area of Flash or SRAM from TrustZone protection, allowing sensitive workloads to be fully isolated for maximum security. In addition, ST has engineered TrustZone to ensure support for secure boot, special read-out and write protection for integrated SRAM and Flash, and cryptographic acceleration including AES 128/256-bit key hardware acceleration, private key acceleration (PKA), and AES-128 On-The-Fly Decryption (OTFDEC) to protect external code or data. Active tamper detection and support for secure firmware install are also included.
Smart analog features include a state-of-the-art analog-to-digital converter (ADC), two power-gated digital-to-analog converters (DAC), two ultra-low-power comparators, and two operational amplifiers with external or internal follower routing and programmable-gain amplifier (PGA) capability.
The STM32L5 series is available in standard temperature grade for consumer and commercial applications, or high-temperature grade specified from -40°C to 125°C for challenging environments.
For more info, log on www.st.com/stm32l5
